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The Poet's Corner

A Widow Weeds

Posted

A widow weeds beside the house

that has become her husband.

She’s annoyed he hasn’t shaved.

She walks to the lake

that has become her sister.

They pour into each other.

She tells the lake about termites

that have eaten the backbone of her house,

another husband in peril.

She tells the lake about her son

who comes to stack wood,

then leaves and leaves again.

She tells the lake that her retriever

didn’t walk today, because

his breath’s become too hard.

She waits for the cool lake to tell her

about geese who shatter the mirrored sky

and its own tiresome filling and emptying.

Previously published in U.S. 1 Worksheets vol 61, 2016, and Mohler’s poetry collection Broken Umbrellas, 2019. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

A Bucks native, Jane Edna Mohler is the 2020 Bucks County Poet Laureate and 2016 winner of Main Street Voices. Now the Poetry Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal, Jane has been writing poetry since the fifth grade. Her book, Broken Umbrellas, is available on Amazon or from the author.

Poet’s Corner is curated by Bucks County Poet Laureate Tom Mallouk and supported by a grant to the Bucks County Herald Foundation made possible by Marv and Dee Ann Woodall.

To submit a poem for consideration, email it to Heraldpoetscorner@gmail.com.

If the poem has been previously published, please say where it first appeared.


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